In Water We Trust

Sunrise and soybeans. The first rays of the former reach down long rows of the latter, transforming dull olive green to shimmering emerald. A cacophony of birdsong emanates from a wall of woods. For nearly an hour, the trees will keep the sunlight from splashing across Holts Creek and burning off tendrils of hovering mist.

A short bushwhack takes us into a grassy bowl with scattered shrubs and young trees. A narrow stream, barely wider than a footstep, cuts through the center of this spongey meadow. Alex and teammate Lindsay Schneider, who’s sporting an olive-green mask beneath her TNC ballcap, are systematically measuring out a series of sample plots across the entire clearing.

Evolution of The Trust Fund

There was a time when buying swampland, like purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge, supplied a punchline for countless jokes. Over the last 25 years, though, the Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund has proven the wisdom of investing in wetlands and streams and in restoring the natural services they provide to everyone, such as cleaning our water, reducing floods, creating habitat and providing outdoor recreation.

When the trust fund launched in 1995, it presented a straightforward option for developers whose projects impacted small, scattered wetlands (generally less than an acre). Instead of attempting on-site measures of dubious quality and benefit, developers could mitigate damages by paying fees set by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. TNC would then use those pooled resources to undertake larger-scale conservation projects in places identified as priorities.

The trust fund’s early years focused on restoring the Green Sea Wetlands of southeastern Virginia, enhancing habitat as well as natural water filters in the river systems that provide drinking water for the people of Hampton Roads. In 2003, the program expanded to include stream projects. One of the most complex stream restorations ever undertaken in Virginia involved protecting new city parkland and restoring approximately two miles of Charlottesville’s Meadow Creek.

The program has also evolved to keep current with legal and regulatory changes, as well as to engage more partners. Today, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is a co- administrator, and TNC’s trust fund team regularly consults with experts from myriad agencies and organizations. Tribal representatives also are participating, most recently weighing in on a project at Cedar Creek Battlefields in the Shenandoah Valley.

“From a relatively small cumulative impact, our Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund has conserved more than 20,000 acres, nearly half of which is now public land,” director Karen Johnson says, summing up the program’s accomplishments. These sites include state natural area preserves such as Crow’s Nest and Ogdens Cave in Northern Virginia, as well as lands managed by the cities of Harrisonburg and Fredericksburg.

“We’ve also prevented tons of sediment from polluting streams and served as a mitigation model that's being emulated in states such as Ohio and Utah,” Johnson says. Looking to the trust fund’s next quarter century, Johnson adds, “I’d like to leverage our 25 years of experience to replicate the success of TNC’s Fire Learning Exchange, but for wetland and stream mitigation and restoration.”

Trust Fund Highlights

From such a range of conservation projects covering 25 years, how does one choose the most significant highlights? What criteria do you use?

I decided to ask members of the team—not only which projects they consider program milestones, but also which sites hold some sort of personal significance. Read on for a sampling of their responses.

Michael Lipford

(Former Virginia State Director and TNC Southern Division Director (retired) and a co-creator of the trust fund.)

From a conservation standpoint, we protected a lot of really special places with this funding source. The Nature Conservancy created a mitigation network, we told the success stories through that network and that has stimulated action in other places. I want that to continue, and I want TNC to be best in class so that, through our science, we do projects that help avoid impacts, we help offset them and we choose places that will stand the test of time. I’ll just add that it’s our people who made this program work—and our continuity of purpose.